- [Voiceover] Welcome to Teacher Tech Tips.I'm Oliver Schinkten.This week, I want to introduce you to a websitethat will help you and your students to improvetheir vocabulary.In the digital age, we have access to a ton of information.And it's become less important to simply memorize things.If I want to know the eighth president for example,I could go on Google, type in eighth president,it's good old Martin Van Buren.So, the need to memorize things has really declined.Vocabulary on the other hand maybe more important than ever.It's critical that our students have the abilityto use the correct terms and keywordswhen they're using these search enginesor when determining whether a resource is credible,or when communicating with others.

Now there's a website that I want to introducethat can help out with vocabularyand it's fun.Let's navigate to vocabulary.com.And on the vocabulary.com homepage,I can sign up for an account in the upper right.In this case, I already have an account so I'll click log inand then sign in.Now the first thing you'll see in your accountis the game that's always runningand it will ask you questionsabout different vocabulary terms.Below you have a few different options that you can usesuch as 50/50, Word in the Wild or Definition.

Here I'll click 50/50 and I'll narrow it down to these two.And I'm going to pick imploring.It says I'm correct.I get my points and I can move to the next question.So it tracks how you're doingas you go through these vocabulary wordsand it will go back and ask you ones that you got incorrect.Here I'll get one wrong on purposeand when I do, I have an option to guess again.And if I do get one wrong after,it will give me the definitionas well as a description of this word,so that I can learn it a little more in depth.Now the next thing I want to take a look atis the dictionary featureon vocabulary.comand here I can look up any wordsby typing them into this search bar.

I'll type in the word critiqueand we'll look it up.It will give me a definition.It gives me some information about it.One thing I really like is on the right hand side,it uses it in different quotesfrom certain genres or areas.So here I could click on sportsand it will show me areas where the word critique was used.We have arts and culture, news, science, technologyand there are some other categories as well.So it really does a good job of giving you the definitionsof words when you look them up.Another neat feature is the vocabulary listand that is to the right of the dictionary.

I'll click this.And here are some preloaded lists,ones that have been shared.Now this is nice because there's a lot of really cool liststhat you can choose from.You may for instance be doing test prepand students want to learn terms from the SAT.I can click hereand it brings up this list.So now not only will it go over these wordsand give you the different definitionsbut it allows you to play say for instance,that game that we saw in the beginning.So if I click on practice,it now asks me these questionsbut it's using the specific words from that listso it really helps you to learn the vocabularyin a fun way.

You can also create your own list.So if you click on vocabulary list again,but here I'm going to click on start a new list.I'll click this and here I can type in my own words.So I'm going to open up another page.And there's a document I want to get here.It's from Cornell University and it's Action Wordsfor Bloom's Taxonomy.So what I'm gonna do is I wanna copy these terms.Let's say I want to understand these action words better.I can copy those and then I'll paste them into here.

I'll click next stepand it let's me know that it's created a 184 word list.It will probably tell me at the bottomthat there's a couple words that they didn't recognizeor that they don't have in their system.But now I have this 184 word listwith all of the terms that I wanted to be in it.Here I can name that listand I'll put down Bloom's Taxonomy Terms.You can put a description.When I'm done, I can click learn these or assign them.I'll click learn them and like that,it brings up that game,using the words that we now put in here.

So this is a really neat way to bringin your vocabulary and allow students to learn itin a fun way.Now there's a lot more that you can do with this websiteand I recommend that you check it out.Help your students to build their vocabularyfor your class, for the SAT, for resumes and interviewsor any other reason.As always, if there's anything is can help withor if you have suggestions on a tech toolthat's worked for you, let me know atoschinkten@linkedin.com or connect with me on Twitterwhere my handle is @schink10.

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Author

Updated

6/26/2017

Released

7/10/2015

Teacher Tech Tips is a series highlighting educational technologies, with a focus on teacher effectiveness and learner achievement. Oliver Schinkten covers educational trends and classroom technologies that can help educators be more efficient in planning lessons, delivering instruction, engaging with students, and grading. Covering both emerging and well-tested technology, these tips help both teachers and students excel.

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